How I Wrote a Memoir: Part IV
An Anecdote, Not an Essay
Before we say goodbye to my creative writing workshop in 2007, let’s discuss one more piece from the ten I wrote during the quarter. In Part III, we looked at a story involving my relationship with my college boyfriend. For the final lesson, I wrote about the man I would date immediately after him while I was still grieving lost love—a rebound that would last longer than the relationship from which I was rebounding. Lesson 10 is called “Drive-Through Debacle.” With my third boyfriend, I had many debacles from which to choose between 1997 and 1999. This one involves an undignified late-night, post-dance-club Del Taco run.
I begin the short essay with a slew of examples to explain why my third boyfriend’s nickname was Lucky Thirteen before setting the scene outside the fast-food joint: He had broken his nose seven times; he had a titanium cheekbone as a result of a jet ski accident; he once puked across the dashboard of my car when he mixed booze with antibiotics; he skewered both of his truck’s front tires in the desert driving over a pile of firewood full of nails; he totaled that same Ford F-150 driving to Big Bear Mountain on black ice when he failed to put on chains while I was in the passenger seat.
When the Tone Doesn't Match the Content
The tone of this piece is comedic and lighthearted, despite the material suggesting a more troubling set of circumstances. I write:
“Akin to a twisted game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, in my twenties I had the inexplicable habit of walking into a crowded room, spinning in circles blindly with a pointed finger, halting on the most overtly maniacal guy in the room and saying, ‘There’s my next boyfriend!’”
This is an exaggeration, as I could still count on one hand how many boys I’d dated up until then, and my writing is somewhat flippant, but I see certain improvements in this piece compared to the first ones I wrote at the beginning of the quarter. This incident has a beginning, middle, and end, while earlier pieces were less structured and cohesive.
Rookie Writing Mistakes
In the next paragraph, I call myself the “DD,” not the “designated driver” but the “designated dumbass.” During the night in question, twenty-three-year-old Lucky Thirteen had had too much to drink, and the minimal alcohol I had consumed had worn off—a consistent theme in my dating life. All this to say I was driving. Then I make two rookie writing mistakes: I pull the reader out of the story to write a paragraph suggesting cops looking to fill DUI quotas should park at the outlet of the Del Taco drive-through late on Saturday nights because they could hand them out like “Halloween candy.” Funny but unnecessary. Next I give away the ending of the story, thus killing the buildup to the shocking conflict and scant resolution I have yet to get into:
“In this case, however, it wasn’t a DUI they’d be after: It was public nudity and crude acts against impressionable minors.”
The reader’s interest may be piqued, but now she knows exactly where this is headed—and way too soon. Plus, the carefree, funny tone of the essay suddenly seems inappropriate in relation to the content.
Here’s what happened after I ordered our burritos before we made it to the window to pick them up: The car behind us was teeming with teenagers, most of whom were probably too young to drive. One of them ran to the front of my blue Acura Integra, pulled his shorts halfway down his butt, and hopped onto the hood. He smacked his behind three times, then pulled his pants up and ran back to his friend’s car. Their windows were rolled down, so I could hear them screaming and laughing. It reminded me of the innocent nights I had in high school renting VHS tapes from Blockbuster. His antics were harmless. I laughed until my boyfriend said, “Watch this!”
When I illustrate the teenage boy and his prank, I do what I did best at thirty-four: I over-describe and lob contrived similes. The boy “skipped . . . like a spry, devious Robin Goodfellow” and slapped his “Johnson & Johnson, powder-fresh Gerber baby butt.” This is practice. It’s an early draft. I’m new. It’s a long process. I’ll get there. So, I will cut myself a break, even while I wince.
What should have happened next: I grabbed our bag of burritos and drove us back to Lucky Thirteen’s parents’ spacious house, where we had a whole wing of the property to ourselves, if you don’t count his bedridden, silent great aunt with dementia who resided in the bedroom next to his.
What actually happened: Lucky Thirteen jumped out of my car, silencing the children behind us, pulled his pants down in their headlights, and bent over head to knees, yelling, “You like that! You like that! Welcome to The Patch, Motherfucker!”
The Patch was “a tender moniker bestowed upon the forest growing between the two now-spread cheeks [his] saintly mother gave him.” Translation: He exposed the entire hairy crack of his skinny ass to children. My fear had been he would yell at them; this was worse. They screamed, not in the way they’d screamed before, but in horror.
I gripped the steering wheel and hung my head out of sight, “saying the prayer of the mortified agnostic.”
My reaction was both apt and passive. I write, “I was livid,” instead of showing my lividness, but I do add important dialogue I recreated from memory:
“I gave him the ‘you-could-have-gotten-arrested’ lecture.
‘Oh, come on. That was hilarious!’ he said.
‘No, it wasn’t. You totally disturbed those kids!’
‘Whatever. They started it.’
‘They have probably never seen a grown man naked before, especially not one so hairy,’ I said.”
When I reread this piece recently, I wrote in the margin, “This isn’t funny. This is assault.”
I remember not talking much to my boyfriend on the drive home, but I didn’t get out of the car to check on the traumatized kids when I had the chance, and now I wish I had. I was ashamed, but I don’t express so. I had an opportunity in this essay to dig deeper to find the meaning behind this event, rather than relaying a surface-level anecdote as if reenacting it at a party for laughs. The truth was I was in pain because of prior rejection, so I chose a partner for whom I knew I wouldn’t fall in love—someone emotionally “safe” to blunt the agony of true loss, and I put up with his appalling behavior because, when he was sober, he was kind, fun, and generous. But I don’t share that here, and I barely scratch the surface with regard to the effect he had on the poor teenagers in that beat-up car behind us. I write:
“They high-tailed it the long way through the parking lot. . . ,” and I was “left wondering how much harm that misguided episode really caused the modest bunch who were just out for a good time.”
But What Does This Story Mean?
It’s a start, but I want more from this ending. What makes this an essay, rather than a yarn? I might suggest to my younger self tying this incident in with others of a similar ilk to show a pattern both in how I deal with my relationship to Lucky Thirteen and the greater significance of our tentative bond. What separates this piece from a stronger one are its implications. What does this all mean? Can I attach more weight to this scene?
I leave the reader with a “perfect fanny imprint on the hood of my car” the “little boy” left, and then I continue to date the offending man because I’m afraid to be alone with my thoughts and emotions and because he does nice things for me sometimes, like teach me how to snowboard. Ultimately, it wasn’t enough.
What the Teacher Said
My instructor said this about Lesson 10:
“Your writing is so lively and fun, Chelsey.” She is confused about whether this is an essay or a short story. She says, “. . . show how it changed you. . .” if it’s a short story. “In a story, I think it’s best when the narrator has shifted in her understanding so she’s no longer the same person.” I would argue that’s sound advice for an essay as well.
Her last comment is one that stuck with me: “I’m sure if you keep writing, and I can’t see you not writing, I’ll be seeing your name all over the place!”
She saw something in my early work I didn’t see yet. It was one of many boosts to come that kept me going and introduced me to the importance of writing mentors.
Write What You Have to Write
Lucky Thirteen eventually made a noteworthy guest appearance in my memoir manuscript, but the Del Taco incident did not. Reviewing the ten pieces I wrote for this long-ago writing workshop, I notice I was immediately drawn to nonfiction, most specifically stories about my romantic encounters. I knew I had to write about them, even if I didn’t fully understand why yet. It’s true what authors say: Write about the thing you are obsessed with—the thing that tugs at you and won’t stop tugging.
I would follow this preoccupation and see it through, but not yet. When this class ended, I was excited to continue writing on my own without deadlines, but I didn’t. I stopped. I temporarily quit because I had massive imposter syndrome. I didn’t write again until I signed up for Memoir I through Gotham Writers Workshop in 2008, when I was now single, back in California, making more questionable romantic decisions that would appear in my upcoming work.
